God, repeat the doctrines of the Gospel, reflect on their connexion, apply them to myself; and if I address myself to God in prayer, in the name of my Redeemer, for these mercies, I find that it contributes to tranquillize my mind, and I admire with gratitude the power of religion." (To be continued.)

FAMILY SERMONS.-No. CXCI. Matt. v. 20.-For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

THIS declaration of our Saviour to the Jews, in his Sermon on the Mount, must have appeared to his hearers most extraordinary; for so great was their national veneration for the two classes of persons here mentioned, that a proverb was current among them, that, if two individuals only were admitted into heaven, the one would be a Scribe and the other a Pharisee. But, if we examine the circumstances of the case, we shall see that there was ample reason for our Lord's declaration; and in the course of our inquiry we shall also learn the nature of that righteousness which alone can qualify us for the enjoyment of heaven. Let us then proceed to examine what was the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, and in what respect it was defective in the sight of God; and then apply the subject to our own case, as professed disciples of Jesus Christ.

The Scribes were doctors or teachers of the law of Moses; their office was not only to write out copies of the word of God as they might be wanted, and carefully to guard against mistakes in copying a record of such infinite importance, but also to expound and apply its contents for the edification of the people. The Pharisees professed to be strict observers of this law: they affected great sanctity of manners

and zeal for the traditions of their fathers. In the time of our Saviour, most of the Scribes were of the sect of the Pharisees: both parties zealously combined their efforts against the doctrines and mission of our Lord; and on both was pronounced many a fearful woe on account of their pride, selfishness, hypocrisy, and other disguised vices.

The righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees was defective in various particulars, and especially in the following: that it was grounded upon unscriptural principles; that it originated in unworthy motives; that it was partial, instead of being universal; and external only, instead of flowing from inward holiness and obedience of heart.

1. It was grounded upon unscriptural principles. Instead of referring to the unperverted oracles of God as the guide of their lives, the Scribes and Pharisees adopted rules of conduct of their own devising, and some of which were in direct opposition to the precepts of Divine revelation. Our Saviour charges upon them that they transgressed the commandments of God by their traditions. For example, one command of God was, that children should honour their parents; and this was a duty so plainly inculcated that no principle that opposed it could possibly be consistent with the letter or spirit of Divine revelation. But the Pharisees, in order to excuse their covetousness and criminal neglect of their parents when in distress, invented the unscriptural principle, that if they promised to devote to the altar of God what God himself commanded them to bestow for the succour of a necessitous parent, their gift would be

accepted and their undutiful conduct excused. "Thus," says our Lord, "have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your traditions." In vain under such circumstances they professed to worship God, "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."

2. Their pretended righteousness

was also defective on account of its originating in unworthy motives. An instance of this we have just seen in their unnatural conduct to their parents; in which, while they pretended zeal for the service of God, their real motive was either covetousness, or the vanity of performing an ostentatious act of charity and devotion. Many other instances likewise are on record. They gave alms, and stood praying in the corners of the streets, and disfigured their faces when they fasted, only that they might be seen of men. It was right to give alms, and to pray, and to keep the fasts appointed by the law of Moses; and to have omitted doing so would have been sinful; but the motives from which the Pharisees performed these acts were utterly corrupt. They sought honour one from another, and not the honour that cometh from God; and so little did they concern themselves about the spring and principle of their actions, that where an outward garb of religion would procure them the same public admiration as the reality, they were willing to substitute the former for the latter. Hence our Lord frequently applies to them the appellation of hypocrites; for their best outward actions were founded upon base motives, such as vanity, selfesteem, or covetousness, on any thing, in short, but true love to God and delight in his commandments

3. Their professed obedience, even when it did not expressly contradict the letter of the commands of God, fell short of the standard of true righteousness by being scanty and partial in its application. They would tithe the smallest herb, or keep up a ceremonial custom, or conform to the dictates of an unimportant tradition, with scrupulous exactness, while they deliberately neglected the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith; love to God and love to their neighbour. They had not respect to all God's commandments; and they made

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their professed obedience to some a pretext for breaking others. They exhibited great zeal for the Sabbath, but they devoured widows' houses; they fasted and prayed, but they were neither just nor truly charitable; and if they did not positively violate a command, they heeded not that they were inattentive to its real spirit and meaning.

4. But lastly, the root and source of the defectiveness of their righteousness was, that it was external only, instead of flowing from inward holiness and obedience of heart to God. Their form of religion was wholly superficial; they were content to cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, while within they were full of extortion and excess. They drew nigh to God with their mouths, and honoured him with their lips, but their hearts were far from him. They were whited sepulchres, which appeared beautiful outward, but within were full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Their faces were disfigured with fasting, but their souls were not humbled on account of their sins; their lips uttered the language of prayer, but they felt no true penitence of heart, no gratitude to God for his mercies, no sense of their spiritual necessities, no desire for the pardon of their transgressions. They did not consider the spiritual character of God's law, which our Saviour explains so fully in this discourse. If they did not commit theft, or murder, or adultery, they viewed it as no sin to indulge in dispositions, and to throw themselves in the way of temptations, which would naturally lead to those crimes. Yet amidst all, far from being humbled on account of the defectiveness of their character, they regarded themselves, and expected that others should regard them, as persons of eminent sanctity: they boasted of their virtues S they. thanked God that they were not as other men; and they depended upon their own false and worthless righ

teousness for acceptance with their omniscient Creator.

But it is abundantly clear, that a righteousness such as has been described could not be pleasing to Him who searcheth the heart and trieth the reins. It failed in every particular which characterises the obedience which God requires. It was hollow and superficial; a mere name, a form, a ceremony; not the dictate of a filial spirit, but a servile routine of heartless observances; not springing from a principle of love to God and reverence for his laws, but only to serve their own unworthy and sinful ends. The word of God abounds in severe reproofs against such vain and hypocritical pretensions to religion.

We need then a righteousness far above that of the Scribes and Pharisees before we can enter into the kingdom of God. Now, there are two senses in which the word righteousness is used in Scripture in connexion with the justification and salvation of mankind. In one of these senses Christ" is made unto us righteousness:" we are justified freely by faith in him, without any claim of merit; and hence this righteousness is called "the righteousness of faith," and, with reference to its Author," the righteousness of God." This, and this only, is our claim to heaven: in point of merit, we must utterly renounce our own righteousness; we must confess and feel ourselves to be miserable sinners, justly deserving God's wrath and condemnation, and unable, by any goodness of our own, to purchase the rewards due only to perfect obedience. To attempt to justify ourselves in the sight of God, to extenuate our sins or magnify our supposed virtues before him, would be the height of arrogance and folly. Our only hope must be in his free mercy in Christ Jesus; our only petition, "Lord be merciful to me a sinner." In this sense of the word, not only the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, but of

every member of the human race, since the fall of Adam, is wholly defective, and unable to stand the scrutiny of Divine justice.

But there is another sense of the word in which we may, and must, personally become partakers of what is implied in the term "righteousness" before we can be admitted to the kingdom of heaven; namely, that holiness of heart and life" without which no man shall see the Lord." It is in this view that the word is to be considered in the text; which does not relate immediately to our claim to heaven by the death and merits of Christ, but to our meetness for it, by a newness of nature, a change of heart, effected in us by the power of the Holy Spirit, and accompanied by the fruits of righteousness in our character and conduct. In this sense, as well as in our trust in the merits of our Redeemer, and not in whole or in part in any supposed merit of our own, must our religion exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees.

Here then is a wide field for selfexamination. Does our religion exceed that of the hypocrite and the formalist? Is it grounded on Scriptural principles? Does it flow from Scriptural motives? Does it extend universally to all God's commands? Has it its root in the heart, as the offspring of faith and love, and the parent of holiness, obedience, and good works? Some, alas! of those who call themselves disciples of Jesus Christ, fall short even of the Scribes and Pharisees themselves. They have as little of the outward decencies as of the inward purity of religion. They practise no self-denial; they neither pray nor give alms; they shew no reverence for the word of God, and neither in the letter nor the spirit keep his commandments. Of such, the sin and danger are too plain, and admitted by all, to need that we should at present dwell upon the subject. But it is not enough that we escape this open licentious

ness of character; we must go much farther if we would be right at last. Our righteousness must exceed not only that of the avowed infidel or profligate, who indeed profess none, but also that of the Scribe or the Pharisee, of the mere decent observer of outward moralities and the forms of religion. We must be new creatures, transformed in the spirit of our minds, and renewed after the image of Him who hath created us, and called us to newness of life in the Gospel of his Son. Our guilt, if our religion does not exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, will be even greater than theirs, because we have had clearer information and more exalted privileges. "If the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation!" We are not taught, as the Jews were, through the medium of outward rites and ceremonies; but " the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true." We are not under the rigour of the Levitical law, but under the new covenant of grace and mercy. Gratitude, therefore, as well as duty, should bind us to seek a complete conformity to the will of God. And, besides this, we have the gracious promise of the Holy Spirit, to enlighten our understandings, to purify our will, and to renew our hearts. We are not left alone and unbefriended in our arduous contest with the world, the flesh, and the devil; for if we pray for strength from above it will be afforded to us according to our necessities. And, to complete all, we have the promise of a crown of glory that fadeth not away, reserved for the Christian in that blessed world where nothing unrighteous or unholy can obtain admission. Let us then fear lest we come short of that promise; and let us ever keep in mind the necessary qualification for the blessedness of heaven; neither deceiving ourselves by

trusting to our own righteousness as the ground of our hope, which must be placed on the merits of our Saviour only; nor, on the other hand, thinking ourselves in the way for the attainment of the promise while we are destitute of that holiness which alone can make us meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

THE first verse of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews is somewhat obscure as it stands in our version, in the French Bible, and in the Latin vulgate.-Faith, if considered as an act or the reliance of the mind, can neither be the substance, nor itself give subsistence to the future things hoped for. Still less can it be the evidence of things not seen, since belief, if rational and well-founded, must be grounded on evidence perceived and understood, and cannot be itself the evidence.

The Syriac version renders &λEXOS by "the manifestation of things not seen," and our translators have rendered λeyxon, John iii. 20, by a word which responds to manifest in the following verse, since light reproves, by making manifest what is reprovable.

The apparent obscurity in the first clause, may probably be removed, by connecting it with the close of the foregoing chapter. "Now the just shall live (be sustained) by faith; but if he draw back, (leans no longer on the truth of my word and promise,) my soul shall have no pleasure in him," shall not approve him." But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition," (what follows is elliptical, and literally)" but of faith to the salvation of the soul," which, if it may be rendered, but of them who keep their hold by faith, to the salvation of the soul, will be connected with the first verse of the next chapter: "Even that faith which lays hold of the substance of things hoped

Hence it very pertinently follows, that by this believing, "the ancients obtained a good report," their faith is recorded to their honour.

If it is considered more answerable to the original to preserve the word evidence, instead of substituting manifestation, we may read, "Now faith (lays hold of) the substance of things hoped for, and of the evidence of things not seen;" and this I believe to be the true sense of the passage, especially when we consider it to be a quotation from the Prophecy of Habakkuk, chapter ii. 4, where Dr. Pocock thinks it should be rendered, "his soul which faints, or is de jected (through unbelief) is not upright in him," but he does not give his authority for concluding Sy and by to be the same, though in some passages the transposition of a letter must be allowed, and fainting is a more congruous opposition to the confidence of faith, than being "lifted up" appears to be. Yet, if an unbelieving presumption of safety, notwithstanding the predictions of the near approach of destruction, either from the Chaldeans or Romans, be intended by the Prophet, and intimated by the Apostle to his incredulous countrymen, lifted up," by vain confidence, is a proper expression.

It is remarkable, that the direc

It is certain that Tayμévo signifies to order or dispose, as a general does his men for an engagement; and thus, Rom. xiii. 1, St. Paul speaks of existing authorities, as ordained of God, though we cannot suppose they were all men approved of

God.

tion to quit Jerusalem was the means of safety pointed out in both sieges; and consequently the heart being lifted up by a proud contempt of the warning, would be the opposite of that obedient faith by which the righteous were promised preservation. But the passage in Habakkuk, chapter ii. 4, I think, may be thus translated literally,-" Behold his soul which is lifted up (removed from its place) is not right," either as to internal or external position, "but the righteous shall live in or by stability." If we consider that the Apostle was addressing the Hebrews in general, this quotation, in his Epistle, has great force, the Christian Jews being considered as apostates by their unbelieving brethren.

C. L.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

By the faculty of speech man is distinguished from the brute creation, and is enabled to taste pleasures of a higher order than the gratification of appetite. It affords him access to the delights of social and intellectual life, and the power of joining collectively in the still more elevated pleasures of devotion; and it is the most ready medium for communicating to others that knowledge by which they also may become acquainted with these blessings.

But the gift of speech is capable of producing very different and opposite effects to these; and so strong is the tendency to the latter, that the tongue is described by unerring wisdom, as "a world of iniquity," in which there is a fire kindled by hell, enflaming the course of nature, and defiling the whole body with unhallowed desires.

We are in all things prone to of fend against the commands of God; that we are taught by inspiration, but so peculiarly so in our speech, that if any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body."